Prince of the Stags
by OverTheLuna
Summary: Queen Cersei was only young when she gave birth to her first son, a boy with coal-black hair and emerald eyes. But try as she might, she could not forget the horrors through which he was born, so had him switched with a dying orphan and never saw him again. Little did she know, the boy would become an apprentice on the Street of Steel, his only possession a bull's head helmet. AU.
1. In the Darkness

Prince of the Stags

Summary: Cersei Lannister was only young when she gave birth to her first son, a boy with coal-black hair and emerald eyes. But try as she might, she could not forget the horrors through which he had been born, so she had the boy switched with a dying orphan and never laid eyes on him again. Little did she know, the boy would become an apprentice on the Street of Steel, his only possession a bull's head helmet. AU, inspired by a plotline from the show.

Disclaimer: Nothing belongs to me, as per usual.

Chapter One

The excruciating pain of the labour had died away to a dull ache, but the agony in her heart had remained untouched by the hours that had passed. Ever since the babe had come forth into the world, she had known.

He lay peaceful enough now, slumbering soundly in his cot, no inkling of the turmoil his birth had caused his mother. The celebration bells pealed all across King's Landing, but luckily the lad showed no sign of waking. Cersei was glad; she did not want to see his eyes.

Scarcely a year had passed since she had stood up in the Great Sept of Baelor and been declared the wife of King Robert Baratheon, the Queen of the Seven Kingdoms. It had all seemed a dream then, the golden sunlight glinting off her hair, and the fresh-forged crown that rested atop it. The people had waved flags and cheered, their joy as much for the end of the war as it was for the young royal couple. Cersei had waved from the balcony, Robert by her side as the applause washed over her like a wave.

And then the doors of the Red Keep were closed, and she was alone.

Cersei had never liked to be alone, she was unused to it. Even in the womb, she had had Jaime for company. But Jaime spent his days patrolling the corridors and standing watch at her husband's door. She did not know what Robert did to occupy himself, though she could hazard a guess that was most like to be the truth. It was not his days that were of concern to her. The nights, on the other hand…

The young queen shook her head, as if that alone would be enough to clear the awful images from her mind. It was a fruitless gesture, she knew that well enough, for she had tried the same each time she felt the babe move inside her, a constant reminder of how the child had come to be.

She had thought, naively, that it would all end once the babe was in her arms, that all the horrors and the bloodshed would be put to rest, and she would become a loving mother. It was what her aunt Genna had told her, on one of the many occasions she had escaped The Twins: _once that babe is in the world, they will become the world to you._

But that was not what had happened. Instead, a squalling bundle of red skin and coal-black hair had been placed in her arms, wrapped in a blanket of black and gold, and she had wanted nothing more than to have the nursemaid take him away again. The woman had refused, her eyes warily flitting toward the door, as if she feared the queen might pounce even from the birthing bed, and so the babe lay just an arm's length from her. There were none who would take him away, none who would care for her enough to save her.

A knock sounded at the door, stronger than the nursemaids and more patient than Robert. The babe stirred in its cradle, mewling at the sudden harshness of the noise, but Cersei paid no heed. It would not matter soon.

The sight of Jaime was enough to calm her racing heart, as it so often proved to be. Her dear brother, the only constant in this ever-shifting world, the only one she could be certain would value her above the babe in the cradle.

The young man stepped further into the room, watching the restless child as if it were a lion cub. "Has the king seen the babe yet?"

"I doubt he's even returned from his hunt." Cersei answered. Her teeth gritted at the thought of her royal husband, covered in blood and sweat and stinking, hulking over her prone frame on the bed.

"Then what do you want of me?" Almost instinctively, the knight crossed to the door, shutting it tight and turning the key in the lock. If even the walls of the Red Keep heard their words, they both would be dead.

"Jaime, I cannot look at him." His royal sister sounded little more than a child, broken and beaten down by the vicious world, and he knew that she spoke not of her royal husband. "The thought of swaddling him, seeing him run and play in the gardens… it makes me sick. Even when he sleeps in the cradle beside me, my skin will crawl, itching like a disease. I cannot bear it, Jaime."

Seeing the tears spring from her eyes, Jaime rushed to the side of the bed, but Cersei had already wiped the water away, her movements as brutal as the lioness laying prone inside her heart. She sat tall amongst her pillows, her head turned away from him, and from the babe in the cradle.

"Tell what I can do." the young knight pleaded. Somehow, his sister's statuesque indifference was a hundred times more frightening than her tears. "I'll do anything."

"You know what to do." The queen's voice was low, but steady. Her eyes were fixed on the wall. "You have to be quick, before Robert returns from the hunt. Trust no one with the truth, there are spies all around the city. We are the only ones who will ever know what became of him."

Jaime nodded stiffly and turned his attention to the cradle once more. The babe was squirming, clutching at the Baratheon quilt wrapped round it, as if the child knew his birthright would be stolen away. The young man wondered for a moment if the babe would remember his mother, loathe the coldness of her heart or miss the warmth of her arms. Of course, he knew that could never be, but even as he snuck the child away, huddled beneath the dark brown cloak he had traded for his white silk, he could not help but wonder.

The task had not been as difficult as he had imagined. The septons preached to them that children were a blessing from the Gods, but this was not true of the slums of King's Landing. At the lower reaches of the city, babes were bartered, sold and slain with each rise and fall of the sun. Too many mouths to feed, too much money to be made, too much disdain for the world they were born into. Flea Bottom was a desperate place, and a gold coin glinting in the moonlight was enough to buy a life.

The first thing Jaime noticed in the orphanage was the stench, each foul smell imaginable seeming to meld into one powerful enough to make him gag. The woman who ran the place did not seem to notice it, her eyes flitting to the Kingsguard every few moments, as if she feared he would run away and take his gold coin with him. Oh, how the man wished he could.

In a tiny room barely the size of a privy, row upon row of wooden crates rested on the floor, each crate containing a squalling child. The din was enough that Jaime wondered how they could not hear it from the palace; mayhaps they had never cared to listen.

"They cry all night, if the older ones leave them be." the woman explained, with a blatant shrug of her shoulders. "Half the time, I wonder why I don't slit their throats in the night. No one would ever miss them. At least that mite seems to hold his tongue."

Then she left him be, just a minute or two, to do the unimaginable. He untucked the babe from his cloak, stunned into quiet by the cold, and lifted another babe from a crate near the door, a puny-looking thing with curls of dark hair. It was not the coal black of the Baratheons, merely a dirty mop the colour of wet mud, but judging by the weak squall of the poor child, there would be little time for anyone to make a comparison.

With a movement as simple as that one, it was done. The sick babe was tucked away in his cloak, the space still warm from where his sister's child had lain, and the woman sat in awe of her golden coin. There had been no true dragons seen for hundreds of years, but the gold ones were a sight just as rare in the slums.

With a nod of thanks to the woman, Jaime turned to the doorway, but something called him back. A small cry, barely audible above the other babes, but he heard it nonetheless. The young man turned back to the crate where his nephew lay and saw the child looking up at him. For years afterwards, he wished he had simply walked away, to not have that sight haunting his dreams. The babe had been the image of its father, coal black hair and cheeks already beginning to fill with fat. But he had looked up at Jaime Lannister with Cersei's eyes.

A/N: I've had this idea in my head for a while, and I'm kind of obsessed with the theory that Gendry could be Cersei's son. So I've got a motor on with this story, before the show spoils the ending and proves me wrong! Hope you guys enjoy this one! Please review!


	2. Emerald Ghosts

Chapter Two

A/N: Thank you so much to The Hope Lions, green, XBolt51, Brady420, monocrows, ProTaggingProperly and my wonderful guests for reviewing the first chapter; I've been overwhelmed by the response! Just to clarify, this is an _AU_ story, as stated in the description and first chapter; I know Gendry's canonical storyline in the books and this will not be it.

Cersei awoke to the sound of a babe mewling in the cradle, and at once, the bile began to rise in her throat. She had grown used to silence in her chambers, though when her babe had cried, it had roared like a lion; this poor child scarcely had the strength to cry.

It had been less difficult to pretend her anguish than she might have imagined. The queen had woken that first morn and cried for her guards, screaming for one of them to fetch a maester. When Pycelle had examined the child, she refused to put him down, cradling the babe as if her touch alone could make him well again. She had played her part as well as a mummer on a stage; even the king had believed her folly.

Of course, once she was alone it was a different tale. The boy would be returned to his cradle, out of sight, and she would seek out a few hours of rest before he cried again. But the more days passed by, the harder Cersei found it to put the child down. By the time a week had passed, she refused to do so at all.

"Take it away." the queen instructed her handmaiden, turning her nose up at the plate of cheeses and fruits. She had no time for such frivolities. The girl wavered a moment- it was clear enough she had her orders to make certain the queen ate her meal- but she obeyed nonetheless, bobbing a curtsy and leaving the plate on a table at the far side of the room, in the hope her mistress would pick at it later. It had been the same routine for a week, and Cersei had scarcely relented.

Once the girl was gone, the room was silent once more, but for the laboured breaths of the sleeping babe. The young woman looked down on the child, frowning; she was unused to feeling so powerless, when her own father had raised her to sit at the top of the world.

For the thousandth time, a voice inside Cersei's mind screamed out in despair. ' _You chose this child for a reason. You wanted this all to be over and done, so that you might have a true heir to put on the throne. There's naught to be done to spare the babe, unfortunate though it might be; why waste your precious time on a lost cause?'_

But still she did not relinquish her grip on the child. The more she held the quaking bundle of blankets, the harder it was to tear herself away. The boy was like a poisonous weed, wrapping its venomous tendrils around her heart and clutching until she could barely breathe. The pain was becoming unbearable, and Cersei longed for it to be over and done.

It would not be long before the Mother answered her prayers. That very night, the babe began to cough, a terrible hacking sound that seemed too forceful to have come from one so young. The child seemed to show a certain strength even as it was dying. Mayhaps Jaime had chosen a little too perfectly.

After an hour of listening to the ailing child, Cersei rose from her bed, crossing her chamber to the doorway and hoping that she had remembered the guards' rotations well enough. Much to her relief, only one Kingsguard stood watch, alongside two men in Lannister garb. Her own twin brother.

"Jaime." she whispered, hoping not to draw attention to herself. The younger's head snapped towards her, his eyes wide with concern. The wooden door was hardly thick enough to muffle the child's cries; he would have spent the night listening to them.

Once the door was closed behind them again, Cersei threw herself into her brother's arms, clinging to him the way one would to a raft in stormy waters. Jaime held her in silence, unquestioning, just as his affection had always been. As had his loyalty.

"I cannot bear this any longer." she murmured through gritted teeth, her voice muffled by the leather of his doublet. "Each cry makes my heart burn, like a brand under my skin. This was supposed to make it all easier."

Her strong exterior began to falter, and it was akin to a knife scraping across Jaime's skin to see her crumble. Reluctantly, the knight pulled back from her embrace, resting a hand on each of her cheeks to force her to meet his eye. "What would you have me do?"

Cersei did not answer; she did not need to. The pleading look in her eyes was enough.

Somewhere behind the two of them, the babe whimpered louder. The queen inhaled deeply, her eyes clenched so tightly shut they might have never opened again. As much as it hurt to see her so tortured, Jaime could not help his relief. Anything was better than watching the ghosts dance across the emerald green of her irises.

Two more hours went by before Jaime was relieved of his guard, the stone-faced Ser Barristan coming to take last watch. The way the legendary warrior looked at the boy was almost enough to make him wonder if the Lord Commander knew what he had done. It was impossible, he had taken such care… but still he wondered.

The climb to the tower seemed endless, the heavy weight of exhaustion weighing on his limbs like lead. ' _There is no time to hesitate.'_ Jaime reminded himself, pushing onwards even as his body screamed in protest. ' _This is all for Cersei. She is already crumbling; wait too long, and your dear sister will be nothing but dust.'_

Once into his chamber, the young man shed his armour in favour of a brown woollen cloak that still bore the stench of Flea Bottom from only a week past. The ghost of the babe's warmth seemed to linger in the wool, though it was like to be only his imagination. ' _Real or dream, it does not matter. He will be home with Cersei soon. True, he might be the son of that Baratheon bastard, but he has Cersei's eyes. She will love him for that. And so will I.'_

For the first time, the burden seemed to lift from his shoulders and Jaime allowed himself the smallest smile as he sank onto the mattress, pulling a pair of worn leather boots from beside the bed. All would be well…

The sound of bells pealed across the city, shocking Jaime into wakefulness. Panicked, the Lannister boy looked to the window, seeing sunlight stream through the gaps in the shutters. ' _No.'_ his mind cried out. He had only shut his eyes for a moment.

Immediately, he thought of Cersei. Were those the warning bells? Was the city under attack? He had to keep his sister safe, to keep any harm from coming to her just as he had always promised to do.

With a sickening turn of his stomach, Jaime realised. The bells that sounded high above the city were not an insistent call to arms, but a slow, mournful toll. He had last heard those bells little over a year ago, when the war that had torn the Kingdoms in two finally came to an end. The death of a babe-in-arms had scarred his conscience then as well.

' _Oh, my dear sister.'_ His mind cried out. If he listened carefully, he imagined he could hear her soul cry out. ' _Now you have truly lost a son. And for all the role I played in stealing him, I might as well wear his blood on my hands. I am sorry, sister. I could not protect you from this.'_

A/N: Quite a while for the second chapter, sorry about that! I absolutely believe that Cersei would have struggled to raise a child that wasn't hers, hence why she specifically asked Jaime to get a child who was close to dying, but I do think that watching the orphan boy struggle would have hit a little too close to her in regard to giving up her own child. Unfortunately, Jaime was too late to fix it. And so here we are! Really hope you enjoyed, guys, please review!


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